Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL), India's largest car maker expects to see sales improve starting the first week of September. The company hopes the festive season would give a boost to flagging passenger car sales.

Maruti, which targeted 10-12 per cent growth in the beginning of 2011-12, has had to lower targets and expects only a single-digit growth during this financial year.

Car sales have been falling since the April-July period, on hardening interest rates and surging fuel prices. Exports are also way behind targets as the European market is hit by financial turmoil.

According to Shashank Srivastav, chief general manager, the recovery in car sales was expected to begin in early September. He added though, the turnaround would be slow, as interest rates were not expected to fall any time soon.

He added that the company had initially set a growth target of 10-12 per cent for 2011-12 but expected only a single-digit growth this financial year.

The car maker could manage to sell 317,000 cars in the first four months of the current financial year recording sales volume of 1.18 million cars across all its models in 2010-11.